Who gets paid in a shutdown? Congress!

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- If lawmakers can't agree on a spending bill before the clock strikes midnight, a couple million federal workers won't be getting paychecks on time. Troops fighting in Afghanistan won't be paid on time either.

Some 800,000 workers likely to be furloughed aren't guaranteed back pay.

And so it's easy to understand the flurry of bills in the House and Senate over the past few months that would prohibit lawmakers from being paid in the event of a shutdown.

The Senate passed a stand-alone bill last month that would have done just that. Twenty-one senators wrote a letter to House Speaker John Boehner asking him to move the bill through the House. The bill was never voted on.

On Friday, Boehner alerted House members that he would return his own paycheck and explained how others could do the same.